The issue is that we hide our catalog records in our catalogs. While the public face of those catalogs is a WebOPAC, this is only an html based interface to the catalog data, an interface that is inherently self contained. The actual records are not searchable via a search originating on the open web. That is, I can't google or yahoo "Gone with the Wind" along with my locale to discover that my local library has a copy of the book or the movie available. If I have understood anything that Diane Hillmann has said over the past few years it's that this segregation of our catalog records from the larger web is possibly the greatest threat to our relevance in the future. We will be like that island in Dr. Doolittle that breaks off from the mainland and floats, lost, unknown and locked in time, while the rest of the world moves forward. Second to that is the insistence on creating catalog records that, at their core, are still only visually parsable. This needs to be rectified by the creation of cataloging standards and data structures that offer the ability to use programming to machine harvest data, then manipulate and insert it into well formed catalog record shells. This is necessary, not only to address the productivity issues surrounding the explosion of digital resources, but also to keep cataloging current with evolving information management practices which have grown more sophisticated than the essentially linear data structures we inherited from the card catalog and that we use MARC to recreate. We made a huge stride when we went from reproducing a description for each access point in a card catalog to using online systems to build indexes that pointed to a single copy of that description, but where each description holds copies of the access points. It is time to evolve to the next level, where there is a single copy of each of the access points and then the descriptions point to them (and probably more that I haven't quite comprehended yet). Of course half the time I don't quite follow all the ins and outs and another third of the time I'm afraid that my profession is going to morph beyond recognition (and possibly my abilities). But the sixth of the time that I really get it, I'm excited enough to hope. (With apologies if I've wandered somewhat from the initial premise or if I've misrepresented Diane.) John Myers, Catalog Librarian Schaffer Library, Union College Schenectady NY 12308 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 518-388-6623
________________________________ From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access on behalf of Miksa, Shawne [snip] This idea of "hoarding" and "hiding" is difficult to understand as it makes it sound as if librarians, and especially those who catalog, are cave dwellers who can't speak.
